[satvikpendem]

CLAs are always a good idea if one is maintaining an open source project. I'm not going to track down every single contributor who made some small PR perhaps, just to make a license change.

[boring_twenties]

And I'm not going to contribute any change, no matter how small, to a project whose maintainer reserves the right to change the license in the future.

[evol262]

Why is your project changing the license, and why do you assume that contributors would still have done so under whatever license you're changing to?

[satvikpendem]

The license could change for any number of reasons, making a paid version, making it GPL, etc. With a CLA, I don't have to assume, I'm able to change it regardless, that's why for maintainers they are useful.

[alwayslikethis]

Keeping the software free, i.e. not proprietary, even from maintainers trying to make it so, is the very point of GPL. When you ask contributors to sign a CLA, you are saying that you might want make it proprietary in the future and reserve the ability to do so. You should never sign one if you don't want to contribute to proprietary software.

[jhasse]

As a contributor I wouldn't want the code I made to be under a different license in the future.